you know what's weird? the way that everywhere you go, absolutely everywhere, there are always some locals complaining about how no one knows how to drive there.

it must be something psychological about people who want to complain about other people. 'people here don't know how drive,' as if there some perfect driving mecca somewhere they long to return to. sometimes they've never even lived anywhere else, but still believe that bad driving is somehow a local phenomenon.

I think part of that is because no matter where you go there will always be a decent portion of the driving population who are pretty shitty at driving. When you want to complain about bad drivers in X demographic just point to the shitty driving population in your area and blame it on whichever group you want to complain about.

After spending a couple month in Regina I have to admit that they do drive better than in Victoria. I think it has to do with forced driver lessons and how in BC you need to pay for lessons. And immigrants wanting to drive like "back home".

I also spent a few years in Regina and I have to disagree. I think it just appears that drivers in Regina are better because the roads are so straight and all the turns are 90' and they drive at ridiculous speeds. As far as following traffic rules and being aware of other drivers they are horrendous. Whenever my Regina friends come out to visit it's actually hilarious watching them try to navigate corners when it's foggy.

Having traveled to many third world countries to do humanitarian volunteering I am most certainly not xenophobic. It is during these travels that one gets to see how driving styles change from country to country. Some of these driving styles aren't compatible with ours and conflict arise.

I live there actually. Yea, it's rough. But it isn't block after block of ghettoized urban sprawl that 911 won't even respond to. If you think places like the Gorge, Discovery street and Pandora/Quadra are bad neighborhoods, I almost want to buy you a teddy bear.

It's not a pissing contest or race to the bottom. Huma deprivation, misery and addiction are still horrible, even if it is not like some place you saw on the television. What a self-serving and vapid response.

I work at the dockyard. Every single day, the "vast majority" who cycle out the front gate at the end of the work day go up onto Lyall Street by the bus stand rather than risk the traffic on Esquimalt Road. Every one of them breaks the law because that stretch of road is one way in the opposite direction. If a car's coming, they try and go up on the sidewalk and expect the walkers to move. These are military and civilians and I've been hit from behind 3 times in the 10 years I've lived here because of it.

The only time I've seen them is sitting at the top end (just before it turns to one way). Of course, everyone who saw them got off and walked their bikes on the sidewalk through the zone. They should park down in the Chief's and PO's mess parking lot and catch them as they come over the hill. There would be no way the cyclists could argue the point then.

Every morning, I drive down saanich rd., and most of the cyclists stop at the galloping goose crossing. A lot don't don't, and just speed directly through, expecting drivers to see them from around corners and from the bottom of a hill... That being said, the intersection at saanich and mckenzie is terrible for drivers running red lights, not a week goes by where if I didn't check before proceeding at the green light, I would've been hit, or almost hit. Unaware people are drivers as well as cyclists, I don't think it's fair to blame just cyclists for this problem, but at the same time, a lot of cyclists do indeed do this.

That could also be because the majority of vehicles on the road are cars, by far. I also tend to only notice bikes/motorcycles when they do bad things. (Speed thru traffic, weaving in and out, or running reds on a bike)

They definitely do. Always a safe bet in case the incoming traffic takes a wide corner for some reason (they aren't expecting you as you shouldn't be there) and of course for pedestrians. I know the feeling, always seem to get caught on Burnside at Ravine near Saanich city hall and always feel like just running it.

I treat this like a stop sign: do stop, but then if it's safe, and there's no conceivable way for me to interfere with traffic or for cars to hit me (without special effort on their part), I'll proceed through on the red.

Yeah, I go by that philosophy when I'm a pedestrian too -- Canada's pedestrian/traffic right-of-way laws scare me. They focus way too much on entitlement and far too little on basic physics: when I cross the road, I want a set of rules that makes it unlikely I'm going to get hit even if multiple people fuck up at once. This whole idea of "use the crosswalk; it gives you the right of way!" is insane -- I don't want someone to be able to hit me solely by not paying attention; if a car's going to hit me I want them to have to work for it. So when I cross the street, I always time it so that in order to get hit, someone would have to:
A) notice me
and
B) make a deliberate effort to alter course to hit me
and
C) if they don't notice me at all, I'm guaranteed to be safe

While there are some scumbag cyclists out there, there are also a shit tonne of scumbag drivers. The big difference...when a scumbag driver gets in an accident people die. Not justifying red light running but no one other than the cyclist is going to die because of their behaviour.

I can confirm this. My former neighbour was struck by a cyclist going the wrong way down Government. While I wouldn't call her particularly old (maybe 50 to 55), the impact caused her to take a pretty hard fall. In addition to really screwing up her knee (iirc, it had to do with tearing ligaments) she shattered her elbow and required repeated surgeries. Cyclists are not like cars, they have no insurance. The physical and financial cost to this woman was unbelievable. The situation was very sad. She moved before it ever got resolved so I am not sure what happened to her.

I have to disagree. If a cyclist blows a light or stop sign and causes a driver to swerve, that could cause a chain reaction accident.

As well, if a cyclist runs a light and I hit them with my vehicle and kill them, regardless of if I am found to be 100 percent non-liable I will still have to wake up every day for the rest of my life knowing that I killed someone. I am not sure I could live with that.

I know you were not trying to justify running a red light but, unfortunately, the mentality of a number of cyclists is just that, that they are not putting others in danger by their reckless behaviour and in reality they are.

Tbh I run reds/stop signs on my bike all the time, but would NEVER do it during busy times or if there was anyway that a driver would even have to think about moving their foot from the gas to the brake. Even as a biker/pedestrian i'm always thinking as a motorist and how to just get out of the way of cars/ give them the right of way or prevent them from having to slow down for me. I think the big problem lies in cyclists don't share the same thinking and assume that "THIS IS MY ROAD" and cause major traffic problems, the same can be said about drivers that don't give bikers enough room on the shoulder and then claim that the biker is in the wrong; kinda goes both ways.

If I run a red its usually between 11pm and 6am when there's basically nobody on the road. If I do it during the daytime its usually at intersections with pressure plates that won't trigger for cyclists, and then only when there's no cars in sight. I'd never run a light when there's more than 2-3 cars on the road.

What pisses me off are the cyclists that stop in the left lane during peak hours trying to turn without an advance signal, holding up at least 7-8 cars while they wait for the yellow.